MKI is for Московский Комбинат Игрушек

Or . . . Moskovskiy Kombinat Igrushek, literally translated as Moscow Combine [of] Toys, properly the Moscow Toy Factory, one of the 20-odd which were grouped under the Krugozor 'super combine' (which I mentioned the other day) for the late 1970's through to the 1990's, they (MKI) managed to survive and hive themselves off again!

I love these, I only have one pose, but I have pictures of all of them and will slowly build a collection, also, they were - I believe - originally sold in matching sets, horse and rider in the same colour (there are many colours), with a non colour-matched lance or spear, if required; some have sculpted-in weaponry, swords and the like.

Different sources state that they were copied by a co-operative in Odessa (under collectivisation this would have been a permissive thing, like the different sets of Progress revolutionary cavalry we've seen here at Small Scale World in the past), copied by a Polish company and re-issued under Krugozor, while someone was supposed to have issued a complimentary 'new' figure a few years ago, but I now can't find the details of that?

This is my original MKI jobbie, he's a synthetic-rubber/PVC (like Malyesh's output), and has a larger ring-hand hole, so gets a kebab stick as his replacement lance!

The sculptor of the originals is given as Mikhail Anoshin and what I love about them is the stylisation, they remind me almost of the Bayeux tapestry, or - more poignantly - the work of Russian artist Ivan Bilibin, whos work I've loved since I picked-up a book of his theatrical/operatic stage-designs in 1981 or '82, and an exhibition of who's work, in London, I managed to get to, in the early 1990's.

Mine is the 'Russian knight' I believe (or Bogatyr, contemporary of the Redcat Rus we saw earlier today), but which one I'm not so sure, there seem to be two? This is a later version/copy in polyethylene; it's a dense one too, which makes the rider a bit stiff for the horse, but a good shove does the trick! He has a smaller ring-hand hole, so gets a toothpick!

The set would appear to be a 12-count, but with the copies and possible mould-damage at some point leading to a new horse and possibly some detail changes, it is now an arguable 13 to find? There is a good thread on them here, and armed with the scratch info' here presented (for the first time in English?), you won't need Russian-language to enjoy the pictures, the sculptor is seen at work on them on page three, there's a stunning line-up at the top of page five, while page six has the 'main 12' in high-resolution.

These are the supposed '13' of them:

• 1. Polish Winged Hussar
• 2. Knight (Teutonic/mid-late medieval)
• 3. Bogatyr (early/Rus knight + Polish copy)
• 4. Roman
• 5. Saracen
• 6. Tatar
• 7. Hussar
• 8. Cuirassier
• 9. Cossack with Spear
• 10. Red Guard (two versions of horse)
• 11. Dzhigit/Zaporozhye with Saber (Ottoman/Caucasian and Central Asian horseman)
• 12. Budenovets (revolutionary horseman)
• 13. Kuban/Don Cossack (on a cuirassier horse with 'harem' trousers) 

While, as I said above; MKI extracted themselves from Krugozor after the fall of the 'curtain' and can be found, still-trading, here.